Sunday, February 19, 2006

The upward spiral

Spiral Beach absolutely stole the show Sunday. A fabulously entertaining stage act, the carnival beat of a simple drum kit, driving bass, cheesy keyboards and a 12-string guitar are blended into the lovechild of The Unicorns, Of Montreal and Martha & The Muffins.
Spiral Beach is a pair of brothers - Airick and Daniel Woodhead - a bass player (Dorian Thornton) who looks like a close relation and a wild-haired keyboardist, guitarist and vocalist named Maddy Wilde. The band is loaded with youthful energy and bounce around the stage with abandon. It's chaos - but controlled. Even when parts of the drum kit fell over (twice) and the bassist unplugged himself during the encore the momentum was maintained. Hilarious band-crowd banter added to the fun. The audience had bellied up to the stage and was jumping up and down as one before the set ended.

Daniel drums - in fab striped pants, even. As you can see, he's got quite a minimalist kit.



Dorian sneaks about.



Airick sings!



Airick mugs! I think he has all-ages-show stigmata.



Maddy sings while bassist Dorian continues sneaking!



Those crazy kids!



"I love you, but you're out of tune"



Even when things started breaking, falling over, and turning into a cover of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water the group kept things moving along.



Teenage dance party, yeah!



It all added up to the best show of the year to date (after Friday, they're tied for first with Gogol Bordello). Fortunately, no one was killed in the stampede to the merch table to buy their self-released CD.

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